Latham admits he made Christmas-deadline decision alone

Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham today admitted making the decision to bring the Australian troops home from Iraq by Christmas without taking the deadline to shadow cabinet.

Mr Latham's admission came after 10 days of claim and counter-claim about his pledge, made on Sydney radio on Tuesday last week, to bring the troops home by Christmas if elected to government.

Mr Latham had claimed the Christmas deadline had been decided by shadow cabinet 12 months ago.

But today he said shadow cabinet's decision had been to bring the troops home as soon as possible, with the actual timing to be set only when they knew when the election was likely to be held.

After Prime Minister John Howard indicated the election would be in the second half of the year, Mr Latham was able to decide on Christmas as a potential deadline - without taking the date to shadow cabinet.

"We don't need to go back and reinvent the wheel if the decision is to get them back," Mr Latham told the John Laws radio show.

"You don't have big meetings and deliberations about every dotting of the 'i' or crossing of the 't'. Labor's policy was clear. It's not surprising. We opposed the war in the first place.

"I had consultation with the relevant shadow ministers and that's how you do things."

Mr Latham said he had only been able to set a specific deadline after getting a sense of when the election would be held.

"Labor had been saying 'get the troops home as soon as possible', but of course how do you spell that out in 2004?" he asked.

"We can't do it until we get into government and it's clear from what the Prime Minister said, we'll have an election later in the year, and it's reasonable then for Labor to start talking about Christmas as our intention for bringing the troops home."

Mr Howard said the comments showed Mr Latham had acted unilaterally and then pretended he hadn't.

"But I think when you act unilaterally you ought to own up to it and not try to go back and ex post facto reconstruct a set of circumstances to suit your unilateral decision.

"Look, a party leader on occasions has a perfect right to act unilaterally. But you should at least have the decency to acknowledge it."

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Robert Hill said he was the person who contacted a spy agency chief and his departmental secretary to clarify briefings given to Mr Latham.

Letters from Ron Bonighton, the head of the top secret Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), and Defence Department Secretary Ric Smith were this week used by the government to discredit Mr Latham over his claim he received briefings on the Iraq war.

Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson denied Labor accusations the Government had pressured the two officials to write their clarifying letters.

Senator Hill said he had sought information about whether the briefings related to operational matters in Iraq.